


Back and in one piece/ Send me home safe

by imsfire



Series: Rebelcaptain appreciation week 2019 [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Anxiety, F/M, Minor Angst, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, lovers kept apart by war and its necessities, minor Bodhi Rook/Luke Skywalker, post ESB pre RoTJ period, worrying about the one you love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 05:04:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18439610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Missions don't always coincide, and every sentient worries about their loved ones when they're apart.Jyn and Bodhi on Home One, and Cassian undercover, thinking about the returns they're longing for.





	Back and in one piece/ Send me home safe

**Author's Note:**

> For Rebelcaptain Appreciation week 2019; day five prompt, Return.

When Cassian is away, even on dreamless nights Jyn wakes with his name on her lips.  Busy missions or downtime, it’s all the same.  Another day without his eyes meeting hers, without his quick strong hands steadying her, his voice saying her name.

He steadies her so often, a presence that keeps at bay too many things she still struggles to speak but fears and hates and shrinks from just the same.  He says her name, that for years she heard only in her own mind and dreaded hearing spoken aloud; he says it all the time, many times daily, in affection, irritation, instruction, quietly and unthinking or in utter delight.  She misses all the ways he says it, when he’s gone; misses him viscerally, says his name the way he says hers, and fights her own tightened breath for a moment, holding back fear.

Six days into an eleven day mission.  One week left, one week left and she’ll know he’s okay.  This is what people mean, when they say love makes you weak, for she cannot keep the whole of her thought intact, and love makes you strong, because for him and the peace he’s brought her, the home he’s become for her, she would fight till her very bones are ripped apart.

There’s acceptance of these things, she’s found.  Official policy may deem relationships among personnel as fraternisation but unofficially they are all just sentients doing their best, and sometimes loving one another just cannot be stopped.  Saw was against the cadre forming close attachments, she remembers; “the one thing those fools of Jedi got right,” he used to say, huskily and angrily.  Never mind that he still wore the grimy patterned cloak that had once been a flag of uprising held in a beloved hand.  “You cannot afford the distraction of hankering after another person.  Sentiment, it’s nothing but sentiment.  Weakness.”

But here? - when Jyn and Bodhi sit together in the mess, eating their starchy fries and protein strips, and talking in low voices, nobody muscles in, nobody reprimands them for focusing on their absent lovers. 

And Jyn does hanker, and worry, and ache, just as Bodhi does for Luke when the call goes out: _Squadron up!  All pilots report to Hangar One!_

They sit over their kaf in the morning.  _Home One_ ’s artificial daylight is bright and the mess hall is decorated in cheery abstract bands of blue and gold tile, like sunlight through water above a sandbar. 

Six days in, and seven days in; and now it’s the eighth day of Cassian’s mission undercover on an Imperial ship; the second of Luke’s patrol to the Lothal Sector.   Only three more days to go.

“He knows what he’s doing,” Bodhi says.  As he’s said to her every day. “He plans so meticulously.  He’s never reckless.” He catches her eye with a small grin; they both know how the rest of the litany goes.

“Almost never.” She returns the smile. “Only when we can all be reckless together and save the rebellion.”

Bodhi’s face goes quiet. “He’ll come back to you.”

He always does, always has, so far. “So will Luke.”

“I always worry he’ll be – you know, missing another limb or something.”

“And at the moment the two of you match.” It’s a bad joke, jokes have never been her forte.  But she cannot reassure Bodhi that Luke will not take risks, since they both know the young commander sticks his neck into trouble every time it blows in.  Storm winds and battles draw Luke as the magnet draws the iron blade.

“Yeah.  Just want him back.”

“Back and in one piece.”

Her own next mission with Kes and the team is on hold until the patrol gets back from reconnaissance.  She’s got plenty to occupy her; she’s working with comms on slicing Imperial relay codes, she’s training new recruits in hand-to-hand.  In her free time she works out, runs, plays sabacc just well enough to win the odd sugar ration or bag of salty snacks.

But in the back of her mind always is the missing presence; the longing and fear, the ache till his eyes meet hers again, till his arms go round her and hold her with a yearning like her own.

“Back and in one piece,” she agrees with Bodhi, and they drink the rest of their kaf in silence.

**

When he lays his head down, to snatch a few hours fearful sleep, the first thing he thinks of as his eyes close is her.  Is she well, is she safe?  Is she as bored in his absence as she always claims to be?

Will he get back to find the Pathfinders’ latest mission has been cleared and Jyn is on her way into danger again, just as he leaves it behind?

In his dreams, he holds her close and feels her heartbeat; and feels her tremble, for just an instant, in his arms.  She never says _I’m scared_ or _Come back to me,_ or _I can’t lose you,_ except when they’re alone; doesn’t show so much as a quiver of fear to anyone but him.  He thinks she talks to Bodhi when he’s gone; hopes profoundly that she does; but he doesn’t know.  Jyn refuses to say or do anything that might make him worry about her.

Jyn has friends, and they love her, and he knows she knows it, but she cannot allow herself to let go, cannot bear to be anything but strong for them. 

Holding it all back, and then shaking for a second in the agony of relief, when they touch.

So many times he’s felt weak around her; helpless with longing, shivering with desire.  Held it all back, and then felt his resolve crumble as she embraces him.  Both of them taught since childhood always to control and hide and never show themselves, always to be strong, shut-down, and do what must be done.  It still feels potent as magic, these moments when he can show her what he’s never shown, and see it again in her face, bright as a mirror; longing, self-knowledge, the vulnerability and the hope she offers him, and he gives back to her.

“I’m shy of you,” she told him once “I’m afraid of losing you.  It’s taken me so long to learn to be able to love you.  It doesn’t make sense, does it?  I’m shy of you and afraid for you.  But I’m not afraid _of_ you.  I never knew that was possible, till now.  To feel so much and not be afraid the person I feel for will hurt me.”

The sun reflected like fire in her face as she looked up at him for a moment, before she tightened her embrace and clung, and he clung to her.  Those strong arms of hers, grabbing onto certainty, refusing to let go.  An embrace like their first, that miraculously was not their last.

Her hands, her rough, kind hands, her strong arms that held him upright once when by rights he should have fallen, that have reached for him so gently when he was all but broken, and so desperately, when her whole world fell.  He wants those arms around him when he lies down, when he wakes.  It’s a physical ache but it’s so much more than that, too.  He wants to talk to her and argue with her, to catch fire from her heat, see her smile at his hope.  There is a strength in being loved, that feeds him, that he yearns for and yearns to return.

 _Send me home safe to Jyn_ , Cassian thinks sleepily, head down on the desk in Willix’ quarters aboard the _Overseer_. 

_Send me home to her, send her home to me.  One more week, one more week till I can rest in her arms.  Send me home safe, send me home._


End file.
